The World Wide Web's Most
Comprehensive Source
of Information on the Current Mass Extinction

The Current Mass Extinction:

Human
beings are currently causing the greatest
mass extinction of species since the extinction of
the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. If present trends
continue one half of all species of life on earth will
be extinct in less than 100 years, as a result of
habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species,
and climate change. (For details see links below.)

Scroll Down For Hundreds Of Links:

This website began on April 22, 1998 with the posting of the article below. (The article is still here to provide historical context.) Following
the article are more than 300 links to recent authoritative reports and updates about the current
mass extinction. New articles are added regularly. (Most recent update September 17, 2018.)

Mass Extinction
Underway, Majority of Biologists Say

Washington
Post
Tuesday, April 21, 1998

[Note: scroll down this page for HUNDREDS of links to updates about the current mass extinction. Most recent update: September 17, 2018.]

By Joby Warrick
Staff Writer

A majority of the nation's biologists are convinced that a "mass extinction"
of plants and animals is underway that poses a major threat to humans in the
next century, yet most Americans are only dimly aware of the problem, a poll
says.

The rapid disappearance of species was ranked as one of the planet's gravest
environmental worries, surpassing pollution, global warming and the thinning
of the ozone layer, according to the survey of 400 scientists commissioned by
New York's American Museum of Natural History.

The poll's release yesterday comes on the heels of a groundbreaking study of
plant diversity that concluded than at least one in eight known plant species
is threatened with extinction. Although scientists are divided over the specific
numbers, many believe that the rate of loss is greater now than at any time
in history.

"The speed at which species are being lost is much faster than any we've
seen in the past -- including those [extinctions] related to meteor collisions,"
said Daniel Simberloff, a University of Tennessee ecologist and prominent expert
in biological diversity who participated in the museum's survey. [Note: the
last mass extinction caused by a meteor collision was that of the dinosaurs,
65 million years ago.]

Most of his peers apparently agree. Nearly seven out of 10 of the biologists
polled said they believed a "mass extinction" was underway, and an
equal number predicted that up to one-fifth of all living species could disappear
within 30 years. Nearly all attributed the losses to human activity, especially
the destruction of plant and animal habitats.

Among the dissenters, some argue that there is not yet enough data to support
the view that a mass extinction is occurring. Many of the estimates of species
loss are extrapolations based on the global destruction of rain forests and
other rich habitats.

Among non-scientists, meanwhile, the subject appears to have made relatively
little impression. Sixty percent of the laymen polled professed little or no
familiarity with the concept of biological diversity, and barely half ranked
species loss as a "major threat."

The scientists interviewed in the Louis Harris poll were members of the Washington-based
American Institute of Biological Sciences, a professional society of more than
5,000 scientists.

SCROLL DOWN FOR HUNDREDS OF LINKS AND UPDATES:

For an overview of the magnitude of the crisis, scroll slowly down this page and
read just the titles of all of the links. When you finish, go back and begin
to click on the links to read the full articles.

New articles are added to this list regularly. Most recent update: September 17, 2018. (Note: websites are being re-organized at a frantic pace these days, sometimes resulting in broken links. If you find a broken link here you can often resurrect it by searching for the URL using Archive.org's "Wayback Machine". You may also be able to find the article you're looking for on another website with some careful web searching.)

TO SEARCH FOR TEXT ON THIS PAGE, use your web browser's "Find" feature ("Control-F" on a PC, "Command-F" on a Mac).

Note: You can now reach this page by the simple address www.massextinction.net.

About the webmaster of this site:

David Ulansey is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. in the history of religion from Princeton
University, and has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Boston University, Barnard College (Columbia University),
the University of Vermont, Princeton University, and Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is the
author of The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World (Oxford University Press), and has published articles in Scientific American and
numerous other scholarly journals. He is the Executive Producer of a new documentary film on the extinction crisis-- "Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction"-- from the Species Alliance, of which he is the founder.

To read Dr. Ulansey's recent letter on the extinction crisis published in the New York Times, click HERE.

To listen to a talk by Dr. Ulansey on the extinction crisis click HERE.

(This page last updated
September 17, 2018.) If you know of articles that should be added
to this page, or if you find broken links, please email them to the webmaster: david [at] mysterium [dot] com.)

Fair Use: any materials on this site that are copyrighted by another person or entity are used in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 solely for non-profit educational purposes under U.S. "fair use" law and are distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving them for research and educational purposes.